The Star Wars: The Old Republic Website announces BioWare's sci-fi MMORPG is now officially free-to-play, though subscriptions are still supported by the game's new hybrid business model. The F2P era comes with a new patch to update the game to version 1.5, so here's word on both changes:

BioWare™, a studio of Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA), and LucasArts announced today that the new, Free-to-Play option for the critically-acclaimed, massively multiplayer online game, Star Wars: The Old Republic is now live. Now players can experience the complete storylines of all eight iconic Star Wars classes, all the way to level 50 for free. This new option complements the existing subscription offering, providing players with maximum flexibility in how they choose to experience Star Wars: The Old Republic.

“We want to give our players the freedom to enjoy Star Wars: The Old Republic when and how they want,” said Matthew Bromberg, General Manager of BioWare Austin. “There has never been a better time to start playing with us.”

Also today, BioWare released Game Update 1.5: HK-51 Activated, which adds new areas to explore, a new Companion character and more, including:

Get ready for an action-packed adventure to earn control of one of the galaxy’s most deadly Assassins, HK-51. Submerged beneath the icy surface of Belsavis lies a derelict ship and if you are brave enough to venture through the wreckage, you will embark on a mission that ultimately rewards you with a powerful new, yet familiar, ally the ruthless Assassin Droid, HK-51.

Explore Section X, a previously untouched area of the prison world of Belsavis. The Dread Masters’ servants are searching for a powerful and ancient weapon. Fly to Section X and secure the target of their search to be richly rewarded.

Travel to Denova to take on Operation: Explosive Conflict – now with a Nightmare Mode! Teams who complete in this new mode can earn the final pieces of the Dread Guard gear set and a brand new mount that will be sure to cause tank envy!

After registering, authorizing email and setting up stupid as fuck security questions I just randomly typed in and saved in last pass as a note. I pressed with much hope on play...

"Error""There is currently no active subscription on this account""Activate your account *here"

*here leads to the account log-in page

So not only did they fail at the basic security setup but I can't even start it. Also I can't post in the forums because apparently, I am not authorized to post, nor play. So I can't play, and I can't post to get it fixed. Holy crap... it's like this game is designed not to be played. Or designed to piss me off today.

If this is the experience EA considers worthy of a subscription I got news for them, it ain't working. By now, I have doubts if you pay you'd even be able to play at all. And as usual it confirms my suspicion that Bioware sucks harder than vacuum cleaners when it comes to designing online functionality of their games.

Holy crap, I never had this many issues with a free game and I play everything at least once.

Anyway, I will try it because all those negative comments made me curious heh.. but account creation is a big clusterfuck, select 3 security questions.. RIGHT, because it's not like a study showed that answering those questions with real answers is like giving every hacker in the world access.... So basically the game wants 3 extra random passwords, instead it calls them security questions and there is no way to save them in LastPass. Who designed this retarded system? Names!

Seriously, as far as security goes can I add another rant? WHY THE FUCK CAN'T WE COPY AND PASTE WITHIN (most) GAMES IN_GAME login SCREENS.

D_K_night wrote on Nov 17, 2012, 01:27:Some of you are just plain asking for too much.

Some of us obviously can't read or comprehend properly.

We, the guys, we are just comparing OTHER F2P games to SWTOR, comparing these already established offerings and business modells to SWTOR. And we come to the conclusion that Bioware and EA failed ONCE AGAIN, because their idea of F2P is to constantly (!) remind the free player, that he is a freeloading asshole.

D_K_night wrote on Nov 17, 2012, 01:27:The intent of F2P, is to show "ok, here's our game. You can do MOST things without paying a dime. but if you want the very best experience, pay up". How is that unfair? Conversely, if I'm a paying customer, why should the fella beside me, who's playing for free, get access to everything that I do, free of charge?

It's not unfair. But you've got to be careful about what you consider "most things". They went too far when they included things like "sprinting" and "xp" in the list. The idea is to put your best foot forward, and convince people that they want to keep playing. They really haven't accomplished that here. I was actually tempted to fire it up again - and I'd paid to play it previously. But the degree of lockdown means that I won't be - and hence won't be giving them any money at all.

If they gave you everything in the game, no restrictions, no difference between you and the guy with a sub...why would ANYONE sub, then? Why wouldn't everyone just play for free?

Some of you are just plain asking for too much. The intent of F2P, is to show "ok, here's our game. You can do MOST things without paying a dime. but if you want the very best experience, pay up". How is that unfair? Conversely, if I'm a paying customer, why should the fella beside me, who's playing for free, get access to everything that I do, free of charge?

Honestly what if all they did, was level cap to 20, but enabled everything else. Would that make you guys happier? Sheesh.

Read the thread. They could have come up with a better business model than "pay for purpz". FREE GAME doesn't mean anything, there are many free games on the market and it's not a charity so stop acting like they're doing people a favor. People aren't complaining that they don't like the FREE CONTENT, they don't like the business model and implementation.

If they gave you everything in the game, no restrictions, no difference between you and the guy with a sub...why would ANYONE sub, then? Why wouldn't everyone just play for free?

Some of you are just plain asking for too much. The intent of F2P, is to show "ok, here's our game. You can do MOST things without paying a dime. but if you want the very best experience, pay up". How is that unfair? Conversely, if I'm a paying customer, why should the fella beside me, who's playing for free, get access to everything that I do, free of charge?

Honestly what if all they did, was level cap to 20, but enabled everything else. Would that make you guys happier? Sheesh.

free to play games are just a rediscovery of the computer game demo. the demo went away during the last console cycle because they were popular enough to eviscerate computer gaming altogether. now here we are again, learning how to do the demo.

do you just give them the start of the game? do you cripple them?

it is like when this stupid "DLC" idea came along which had to rediscover the expansion pack.

people don't want dinky waste of time expansion packs, and people don't want broken un-fun demos. the point of the demo and free to play AND the full game is to make you have fun so you want to pay to have more fun. whether paying more means paying for the full game or paying for an expansion. it is all a twist on the same shit!

if developers studied what worked and what didn't in the past they wouldn't be fumbling so blindly right now

dj LiTh wrote on Nov 16, 2012, 11:18:Wow....somehow i see them losing even more players going free2play....Its like someone asked if they could screw up even more and one of the dev's said 'challenge accepted!'

That was very funny! I got a good laugh from your comment.

Haha.

"There's no way we can make people want to play this even less!""I find your lack of faith disturbing."

dj LiTh wrote on Nov 16, 2012, 11:18:Wow....somehow i see them losing even more players going free2play....Its like someone asked if they could screw up even more and one of the dev's said 'challenge accepted!'

That was very funny! I got a good laugh from your comment.

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” William Casey, CIA Director 1981-1987

I have to admit, this is pretty insulting. I've played many F2P MMO titles where I later subscribed and, consequently, would (at least from time to time) fall back on the mid-tier perks. This includes Pirates of the Burning Sea (Sony) and Lord of the Rings Online (Turbine), two disparate publishers that nevertheless managed to get it right. Then again, D.C. Universe Online had a plethora of restrictions, and it took some growing pains to get games like Champions Online to work with a new model. Nevertheless, there is a right way and a wrong way to implement the three-tier system, and this is the wrong way, especially for an ex-subscriber.

Nacelle wrote on Nov 16, 2012, 14:14:There was no sprint til 10, I think, when the game launched. Now you're whining about it not getting it at level 1 if you're playing for free. It's still a fun game and you get a lot of content for NO money. I unlocked mounts on one of my alts with legacy perks. My son, who is new to the game, doesn't have that option. I don't mount up when we play together. Big deal...

Like EA, you don't get it. The point of Free to Play isn't to just offer players all your content for free. The point of Free to Play is to make them try out your MMO, then let them have a good time so that they will WANT to pay money for extras.

By locking out shit like SPRINT and actual portions of the UI, you are not allowing free players to have fun. you are deliberately gimping them in the hope that they will shell out for a subscription. But if the game is pissing me off, why would I subscribe?

This really isn't that hard. There is a reason Lord of the Rings Online's revenues TRIPLED after they went Free to Play: Because they let players have FUN, didn't restrict anything at the start, and so people wanted to spend money.

EA is doing it exactly the opposite way, and sadly for them, it's not going to work.

Creston

I think LOTRO's success had a little something to do with Lucas not being able to fistfuck the LOTR franchise to near death. I'm so fucking sick of anything and everything Star Wars now thanks to that Jabba with a beard looking sack of shit that I hear the name and I just tune right out. Granted LOTR has shitloads of merchandising too, but nothing to the degree of SW.

Nacelle wrote on Nov 16, 2012, 14:14:There was no sprint til 10, I think, when the game launched. Now you're whining about it not getting it at level 1 if you're playing for free. It's still a fun game and you get a lot of content for NO money. I unlocked mounts on one of my alts with legacy perks. My son, who is new to the game, doesn't have that option. I don't mount up when we play together. Big deal...

The point is, there are lots of options out there for non-subscription MMOs, and EA is discouraging people from playing their own game.

Speaking of which, there's a huge world event starting right now in Guild Wars 2, with a huge new area, new dungeons, new items, skills and even useless but fun ornamental trinkets. It's all being given away, right now, this moment, for nothing, to people who own the game, with no subscription fee.

So, restricted not-F2P SWTOR, or free new stuff in GW2?

See you all later. Got dragons to kill!

Sprint was changed several months ago and was given to ALL players at level 1. The reason was because so many people bitched about it that BW final relented and gave everyone what they wanted. Now they go and take it back like a fucking tease they are. This game hasn’t got a chance of surviving with all the forced restriction in place now. I’ll give this game a year until it’s gone completely. And good riddance too.

Do they still make you pay $40,000 dollars and wait until level 25 before you can buy a 0.025 hp embarrassment criminally mislabeled a "speeder"? You know, the one that jumps up and down like clownish Spirit of Wolf technology from 1999 EverQuest?

You can see that with the F2P version...if you just want to play the game for the campaign...you can. Mousing over the greyed-out features shows they're not totally disabled - they're still usable.

honestly guys even with all the F2P "restrictions"(which really, they're more like debuffs), you can still complete the game from beginning to end, you can still play flashpoints...it's a complete game honestly.

The problem is... I couldn't get all my abilities on the action bar and my character is only 30.